For much of the past week I’ve read and heard lots of discussion from pundits about the possibility, even likelihood of Trump ordering Marine (and Navy) units to blockade and even send in forces to take control of Kharg Island. It’s small, but with ninety percent of it’s oil flowing through it and onto tankers, and refined fuel pipelined back into Iran vital to that country. So sure, sending in troops to completely take over the place which after all is only five miles long and less than 3 miles wide. The problem no one, not even the military experts in the pundit class talk about is how do you get the Amphibious Assault Force, the ships and the Marines to it? Getting there means transiting the Strait of Hormuz and traveling almost another three hundred miles to assault an island only sixteen miles off the coast of Iran.
There are plenty of articles covering the issue of the importance of Kharg Island and to my mind all too casual about what it would actually entail. Not that problems aren’t talked about. This article from Politico is typical, and addresses the issue with this becoming a full blow regional war that will become quite difficult to end. It’s worth the time to read I assure you. Yet the focus in it as in other news coverage is how it could backfire addressed only in geopolitical terms. Worse, the ‘take Kharg Islan’ part seems to be a given – we send in a force, and in short order will control it and force Iran to surrender and from there
Trump’s public comments indicate that his plan for re-opening the Strait of Hormuz is to gain control of Kharg, starve the regime of its oil revenue and force it to disarm. If the administration follows its oil blockade strategy in Venezuela earlier this year, that could start with American ships surrounding the island, to prevent tankers from refilling.
A Marine expeditionary unit should arrive in the region in about a week. It would be capable of launching a ground invasion aimed at seizing control of the island’s oil terminal — the riskiest operation by U.S. forces since the war broke out.
Ok, so there’s at least some acknowledgement of risk but I say Politico and others are missing a quite vital point. I know my reputation for being long-winded but I beg you for your time to explain just how short-sided the thinking/talk about taking over Kharg Island truly is. I’ll do my best to put it in plain terms that you can easily share with others.
Everyone knows how restricted the waters in the Strait are. It’s not just the twenty-one or so miles at the narrowest point but lots of waters on either side that don’t allow much room for maneuver. Anyone who thinks Iran hasn’t spend decades keeping weapons hidden away to take out ships in the Strait is delusional. Yes, we have friendly countries and bases west of the Strait but apparently no one thought to slip some of our Amphibious Assault ships into the western part for ‘joint exercises’ a couple of months ago when Iran might not have kicked up a fuss. Now? Before we can get Naval ships and Assault ships TO Kharg Island to blockade and/or invade it we have to get them through the freaking Strait of Hormuz. Call me crazy but I don’t see Iran allowing that to happen. We can probably get some though but we’ll lose some too. Then what?
A Marine Expeditionary Force and support shits were ordered to make way to the Gulf a couple of weeks ago. I’m not sure when they will arrive on station east of the Strait, but already it appears a second group is going to be dispatched too. Once upon a time in what seems like another life I was a Marine grunt. Someone who expected to wind up on an older version of those ships and landed into Beirut. What I want to impress upon readers is that the the ships (and landing craft) are specialized platforms. It’s not simply a matter of packing a bunch of jarheads onto whatever ship you can find in Kuwait or Bahrain with bagfulls/crates of light weapons and sending them over to Kharg Island. If you want lots of details you can read this Wikipedia entry but basically there are, in addition to troop transports three types of Amphibious Assault Ships:
The term amphibious assault ship is often used interchangeably with other ship classifications. The United States Navy hull classification currently categorizes full-length flight decked (“carrier-type”) amphibious warfare ships into three classes, namely the landing platform helicopter (LPH), landing helicopter assault (LHA) and landing helicopter dock (LHD),[4] all regarded as amphibious assault ships.
To make it even more plain for you civilians, you have ships that aren’t full-fledged aircraft carriers, but rather carry and deploy mostly helicopters and tilt-rotor or even VTOL (Vertical Take Off/Landing jets) designated LPHs – Landing Platform Helicopter. Then you have LHAs (Landing Helicopter Assault) which can deploy helos but also deploy a variety of landing craft from well-decks – both launching landing craft and taking them back aboard. (Like the ship in the title picture) Finally the Landing Helicopter Dock (LDH) are capable of unloading at docks or getting up close enough to a landing beach to deploy troops and vehicles directly from a ramp on the ship to the shore. These ships and landing craft are a far cry from the old Higgins Boats you see in all that WWII footage. They are large and easily tracked by satellite. Say by RUSSIA who can and will keep Iran informed as to exactly where they are.
The problem no one wants to talk about is that you can’t just fly in a Marine Expeditionary unit(s) and load them onto whatever civilian ships you can rustle up. No, you need the ships that were designed for Amphibious Assault and support of said assaults or you’re going to lose a lot of Marines and Navy support personnel. Iran will know when those ships are about to enter the Strait and as I’ve said we have to assume they have prepared long ago in case things ever got to this point.
Oh, so perhaps we can land forces along the Iranian shore to take control of a wide enough strip of land to allow (relatively) safe passage for our ships you ask? That’s going to cost a lot of American blood and lives. It’s a way bigger task to take and hold that much territory than a couple of Expeditionary Units can manage. It would be a tall task for an entire division. Yes, it could be done but the price would be appalling given what we might gain. As for eventually taking Kharg Island itself I shudder at what that might cost.
It’s Iran’s territory and you have to assume they will have some nasty surprises there too. It makes me think of WWII and Tarawa. Most of the fighting at that atoll was on the island of Betio where Japanese Marines had had a couple of years (as opposed to the decades Iran has spent preparing) to dig in Betio is less than half the size of NYC’s Central Park and you really should read about the three day battle before dismissing Kharg Island as some small rock we can just take over.
But before even getting to the possibility of a Tarawa redux, we have to return to the problem of just getting an invasion force into position to attack! I simply don’t believe we can obliterate every defense Iran has before sending warships through the Strait. We were able to assemble a massive force (far more than what we can put into the Gulf) for Tarawa and Naval commanders were oh-so-confident their epic bombardment would wipe out damned near every defender. Well, they didn’t. Not even close. Worse, they used bad information in the planning which wound up stranding most of the landing craft on the reef. The whole thing turned to sh*t in a heartbeat.
If Trump really wants to send in a force to take Kharg Island a look at Tarawa is something every American should do. Given the purging of competent leadership of our military I worry the same type of overconfidence, the ‘stop being a worry-wart, we’ve got this’ mentality might overrule sound assessment of risks. Of course, those who f**k it up won’t be the ones who pay the price. Even more worrisome is there’s no way of knowing for sure how Americans would react. Would we collectively say NO MORE? Or would we be angered and demand blood-for-blood if there are lots of casualties?
NONE of this is being talked about, even by military experts on news shows. It’s something they damned well SHOULD be talking about. So should our leaders on Capitol Hill. I’m worried because it seems like everyone has been lulled into a type of thinking that’s more or less ‘well, the casualties from Kharg Island would suck but what can we do?’ I think we’d be looking at not dozens of deaths and hundred of casualties but HUNDREDS of deaths and THOUSANDS of casualties. Maybe my concerns are overblown but from where I sit is something that should goddamned well be talked about and a LOT in the coming week.
It makes me wonder if Trump has made news outlets so afraid of him that they would follow a directive to NOT talk about this.
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The idea that the US military could achieve any sort of competent victory after the debacles of over the last six decades in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and all the other places where billions of dollars and thousands of lives have been wasted in failing and flailing misadventures with no end victory discernable, is ludicrous.
Iranians know they don’t have to ‘win’ a war, just not lose one.
American military competence has been purely fictional over the last sixty years.
Without Hollywood proving that polishing a turd is possible, maybe this reality would sink in.
You’re selling our military way short. Prior to now they’ve been quite competent to handle any proper, well defined mission thrown their way.
Desert Storm for example. The mission was to throw Saddam and his forces out of Kuwait and while doing so inflict a shitload of damage on both the Iraqi military and a lot of places in Iraq that would need rebuilding. However Poppy Bush specifically did NOT want Saddam deposed or killed. He wanted (and got) an Iraq with just enough capability to keep Iran from taking it over. He worked with allies to build a true, large coalition and a military force structure designed for maneuver warfare that could, and did after a masterful aerial campaign in a few days did exactly what the administration wanted to do.
Idiots and dickheads including Poppy Bush’s eldest son were upset we didn’t head on up the ‘highway of death’, finish off Saddam and take over the country. People were dumbasses and when Baby Bush tried to avenge his daddy (thinking he lost re-election because he didn’t take out Saddam) you saw what that led to.
As for Baby Bush after 911 we actually assembled a good mix of forces and with some allies to take out the Taliban regime in Iraq and kill Bin Laden and his group of foreign gomers. We had them bottled up at Tora Bora and could have and should have moved in for the final kill. It’s reported a spec ops team literally had Bin Laden in their rifle sights only eight hundred meters away. Don’t go blaming the military for Baby Bush ordering a stand down bot for that and turning over ‘finishing the job’ on Al Queeda to the locals – who as we know (for a price) let Bin Laden and leadership slip away and into the lawless mountain region of Pakistan. THAT is on Bush, not our military.
When given a clearly defined MILITARY mission our military has been quite capable of carrying it out. What we in my lifetime have sucked at is nation building, expecting people in unform trained for war to be local and regional diplomats. Note that in Venezuela Trump didn’t try to engage in any ‘nation building.’ Nope, it was a straight up snatch/grab job that turned the country over to a clone leader who, seeing what happened to Maduro be compliant if/when Trump told them to start turning over oil production to Chevron and other U.S. companies. He did NOT attempt regime change, just a change in the top leader,
Iran? You’re correct by saying that like Vietnam all they have to do is not lose – to bleed us dry for however many years it takes. IF there had been a leader in exile who the people there hoped would come back and assume power (as was the case with Khomeni during the final years of the Shah’s rule – although it wasn’t long before Iranians knew they’d made a mistake) I would still be worried about the cost of toppling the current regime but at least there would be hope of an alternative. There isn’t such a person and only a long and bloody MAJOR war we’d have to fight mostly on our own (if someone thinks Israel would send it’s people please send me some of whatever drugs you’re on) but Trump has orange painted himself into a corner.
Our military could, IF we instituted a draft and had at least a million actual ground combat troops we could have on the ground at any one time do the job. That’s not going to happen.
Kharg: 840 miles up from the corner of the Straight. Our helicopters were training to the east of Kharg in Kuwait last week. They think a helo attack with marines is gonna take Kharg? OMG the death of our military will be horrible. Iran is fully aware of what the plans are 1) because mofo 47 tweets about it. 2) there are Russian assets in our intelligence and they can tell Iran and 3) I get a daily briefing on Substack from Malcolm Nance / Jacob Skaarsbo who know that area and what Iran can and will do. This is a complete shitshow of 47’s making and it DID NOT HAVE TO HAPPEN. Any death is on his hands. (BTW: I’m not yay for Iran but I damn well care that our military are not sent to their deaths for some f*cking narcissistic whim.)
you make it dound more like iwo jima or guadalcanal. and no one one has mentioned irsns alkeged hypersonic missles whicj coul take out our carrier group or the kharg force. as vor being long winded.. . read some hemingway.
I grew loving to learn history and since my parent’s generation fought WWII learned a lot about the conflict well before becoming a jarhead myself at age 26. Like others I of course was taught much more in school about the European theater than the Pacific one because let’s face it, most of the country was of European ancestry. That played out in real time during the war. The reason so many of the operations in the Pacific teetered on the edge of disaster was that from FDR on down our government was focused on Europe. There was actually a strong belief to just build up enough of a presence in a few places to stop Japanese expansion and delay retaking what was lost until after Europe was done!
Nimitz and McCarthur were formidable leaders however and determined to show what their troops could do. The latter made up for his arrogance/fucking up in ignoring news of the attack on Pearl Harbor and that Japan had a large force about to attack the Philippines. Nimitz grimly accepted his assignment to manage our Navy in the Pacific and pretty much said and acted with a ‘fuck all y’all’ attitude when Marshal suggested managing a sort of ‘holding action’ – Nimitz was determined to, even with limited resources that didn’t at first allow for major operations start taking the fight to the enemy.
Too few people know the story of Guadalcanal and that movie The Thin Red Line (named by stealing the title of a book that told the real story) pissed me off to no end because at the beginning you had John Travolta’s character with his snarky (to me) comment about the Marines have had their chance and now the Army was there to take care of things. In truth the Marines were largely written off month after month yet still prevailed and the Army only took part in some mopping up operations at the end of the campaign.
It was when McCarthur and Nimitz split into what became known as the Twin Offensives that the so-called Island Hopping strategy was implemented. Tarawa was the first key battle in the central Pacific and it was that priceless airstrip on Betio that had to be neutralized. However flush with earlier successes our Naval (and some Marine) commanders were too cocky to listen to sound advice from people they SHOULD have paid attention to – just as the infamous Montgomery conducted himself in the European theater to sometimes disastrous results. One of the bitter lessons of Tarawa is how critical the timing of ship and air bombardments coordinated with landing craft being sent in truly was. It’s an intricate task and when not done well costs a lot of blood. Even more stunning was ignoring the problem with landing craft, those old school Higgins boats being able to pass over the wide corral reef. The Navy relied on century old charts that said at high tide there would be four feet of water over them, a bit more than a half-foot of what was needed.
Rather than obtain up-to-date charts, and even with some experts who’d been at Tarawa before the Japanese took it telling them the tide would be as little as three feet the brass didn’t listen. The landing craft got stuck on the reefs and the Marines had to wade through a half mile of chest deep water to get to landing beaches. It was a murderous ordeal because another problem – overconfidence in pre invasion bombing. To put it bluntly the Admirals thought the enemy would mostly be killed or so cowed by what we now call “shock and awe” there would be few who would fight back.
So called shock and awe is against a prepared enemy just that – so called.
Not all the lessons of Tarawa were learned, and some of those that were took too long to sink in enough to save lives as the war progressed. That’s why I think it’s the most useful historical analog to what we currently face. The size of the objectives and the discounting of how the enemy knows the importance of the place and is well prepared – especially to wait out crazy intense bombing and emerge from bunkers fresh and ready to fight. We did have some “AmTracs” at Tarawa which could climb the reef but not nearly enough. Again, overconfident top brass assumed what they had would be more than enough.
I could write all day about the assumptions made on our part that led to taking that tiny island of Betio in the Tarawa Atoll so costly but the details are less important than the plain fact is that commanders were supremely arrogant and couldn’t be bothered with experts who had working knowledge regarding the objective and what it would take to win a battle for it.
Sound like anyone we know in command these days?
And still I come back to the issue of just getting the ships with the troops and equipment to the waters near Kharg Island. At least at Tarawa we had enough aircraft carriers to protect a fleet that would first bombard and then land Marines. AND a vast ocean to move around in had a large Japanese fleet been sighted headed that way.
“It makes me wonder if Trump has made news outlets so afraid of him that they would follow a directive to NOT talk about this.”
On the button, else Brendan Carr bloviates
Aside from the very real, very lethal threats you mention to any naval force in the Straits, there’s the not-incidental matter of mines. Iran has lots of them and modern mines are sophisticated pieces of military materiel, not just lumps of explosives waiting for a ship to bump into them. They can be programmed to do sneaky stuff like blowing up the 5th vessel that churns by, not the first. And last I heard, all our mine sweepers were elsewhere.